To replace the main branch downtown, the county is in talks with Rutgers University-Camden about carving out a space in the university's nearby Robeson Library, a school spokesman said. The county library system would staff that facility.
The county plans to fund its operations in the city with a dedicated tax assessed to city property owners.
A third library in South Camden was closed earlier this year because of budget cuts.
Mayor Dana L. Redd, facing a fiscal crisis that also means deep layoffs for the Fire and Police Departments, cut city funding to the libraries this fiscal year from $923,000 to $390,000.
Employees, handed layoff notices Wednesday, said they were saddened and surprised. Even if the county takes over the city system - a move that must be approved by City Council - employees were not sure if they would be rehired.
"Suppose the county doesn't want us?" asked Jewell Johnson, 61, in her 20th year as a librarian.
Johnson and other employees said the county had long coveted the city-owned property where the historic downtown branch sits. It is sandwiched between two buildings - the county jail and courthouse - that have had crowding issues.
Frank Fulbrook, a library board member and civic gadfly, went a step further and alleged that Redd, a former county employee, had orchestrated the library's budget cuts to pave the way for the county to take the land. While other city departments faced 24 percent budget cuts this year, he said, the library system lost more than half of its funding.
In 2000, Camden County freeholders offered to close the dilapidated Federal Street branch and build two new libraries elsewhere in the city, according to news reports.
"The city engineered a crisis to do what they wanted to do for at least 10 years," Fulbrook said.
Redd spokesman Robert Corrales wrote in an e-mail that the allegation was "not true."
